Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet DeadNicholas Birns
Sydney University Press
ISBN: 9781743324363

Australia has been seen as a land of both punishment and refuge. Australian literature has explored these controlling alternatives, and vividly rendered the landscape on which they transpire. Twentieth-century writers left Australia to see the world; now Australia’s distance no longer provides sanctuary. But today the global perspective has arrived with a vengeance.

In Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Nicholas Birns tells the story of how novelists, poets and critics, from Patrick White to Hannah Kent, from Alexis Wright to Christos Tsiolkas, responded to this condition. With rancour, concern and idealism, modern Australian literature conveys a tragic sense of the past yet an abiding vision of the way forward.

Birns paints a vivid picture of a rich Australian literary voice – one not lost to the churning of global markets, but in fact given new life by it. Contrary to the despairing of the critics, Australian literary identity continues to flourish. And as Birns finds, it is not one thing, but many.

Open Access through Knowledge Unlatched

An electronic version of Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead is now freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality scholarly books Open Access for the public good.

Praise for Contemporary Australian Literature

“Birns presents a fascinating analysis: that contemporary Australian writers are challenging the neoliberal status quo … this is a hopeful book, and a valuable addition to the study of Australian literature.”
— Marion Rankine, The Times Literary Supplement

“In this remarkable, bold and fearless book, Nicholas Birns contests how literary cultures are read, how they are constituted and what they stand for … Birns has produced a redemptive analysis that leaves hope for revivifying a world not yet dead.”
— John Kinsella

Digital editions

Digital editions of Contemporary Australian Literature are now available from Google Play and the iBookstore. If you would like more information, or are experiencing technical issues, please email us. Click the below links to download the appropriate ebook format for your device.

About the Author

Nicholas Birns is professor at the New School, New York. He is a leading scholar of Australian literature and editor of Antipodes, the publication of the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies.

Contents

I. Australian Literature: From Modern to Contemporary

Australian Literature in a Time of Winners and Losers

Christina Stead: Australian in Modernity

Medium-Sized Mortals: Elizabeth Harrower and the Crisis of Late Modernity

The Long and the Short of It: The Shape of Contemporary Australian Literature

II. The Affects of Contemporary Australian Literature

The Ludicrous Pageant: Challenging Consensus Through Rancour

Failing to Be Separate: Race, Land, Concern

Australia’s International Styles: The Idealisms of Architecture and Mobility

III. Australian Literature in the World Market

Australian Abroad: Peter Carey’s Inside Course

History Made Present: Hannah Kent and Eleanor Catton

IV. Afterword: Sly Change

Sydney Studies in Australian Literature

The Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series publishes original, peer-reviewed research in the field of Australian literature. The series comprises monographs devoted to the works of major authors and themed collections of essays about current issues in the field of Australian literary studies. The series offers well-researched and engagingly written re-evaluations of the nature and importance of Australian literature, and aims to reinvigorate its study both in Australia and internationally. The series will be of interest to those researching, studying and teaching in the diverse fields of Australian literary studies.

The Fiction of Tim Winton: Earthed and Sacred, by Lyn McCredden
Perhaps more than any other Australian writer, Tim Winton challenges neat distinctions between the “literary” and the “popular”. In this study of Winton’s work and career, Lyn McCredden considers how he has bridged the literary–popular divide. She explores his treatment of class, gender, landscape and belonging, and how his engagement with these themes has deepened and changed over time.

Shirley Hazzard: New Critical Essays, edited by Brigitta Olubas
This collection of scholarly writing on Hazzard’s work examines the terrains she crosses: of love, war, beauty, politics and ethics. It takes up questions of the poetics and ethics of her writing, and considers the global and political scope of her fictional universe.